Front Yard Landscaping

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Recognition for Projects That Benefit the Environment

More and more environmental concerns are involved in landscaping efforts.  Whether you are just trying to cut down on the waste of water or protect the environment from harmful chemicals the decisions you make about your landscape can have a big effect on the environment.  On that note, here are some landscape contractors that are making headlines in their use of good environmental practices for home landscaping.

Case Construction Equipment announced the three winners of the first Environmental Business Awards, a national program that honors landscape contractors whose work directly benefits the environment or overcomes an environmental challenge.

The winning contractors are:

–  Roger Grothe, Aloha Landscaping, Mendota Heights, Minn., who built the
first green roof on the island of Guam.
–  Eric Hansen, Competitive Lawn Service, Downers Grove, Ill., who
converted his fleet of equipment to run almost entirely on propane.
–  Cabbell Lane, Complete Landscaping Systems, Wichita, Kan., who built
an innovative irrigation system to run on reclaimed water.

Each winning contractor receives a trip for two to the Case Tomahawk Customer Center in Tomahawk, Wis., for a customized hands-on equipment training/operation experience, a $1,000 Case gift card good toward any parts, service, rental or equipment purchase, and special editorial feature about their winning project in the December issue of Lawn & Landscape magazine.

Lawn & Landscape created the Environmental Business Awards to recognize landscape contractors whose work demonstrates a commitment to enhancing or protecting the environment. Case is the exclusive sponsor of the awards.

“Case has a long history of supporting the equipment needs of landscape contractors. This is why we’re pleased to recognize contractors who are doing good work — in every sense of the word,” said Curtis Goettel, marketing manager, Case Construction Equipment.

“Landscape contractors appreciate the performance of Case equipment, especially in situations where protecting the native ecology is crucial. Case compact equipment — with small footprints and excellent flotation characteristics — can get the tough jobs done while helping to protect local environments and existing landscapes.”

Qualifying projects included residential or commercial landscaping (including rooftop gardens and green roofs), wetland remediation, landscape rehabilitation and waterscape installations. For more on the winning projects and information on entering next year’s award competition, visit www.LawnandLandscape.com.

Source: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=3E3ADA2400A0B8E4http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=2979830D51E04639

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The loveliness of flowering plants needs little embellishment by description. Certainly every gardener seeks the beauty and color that can be brought to his grounds by a variety of flowers. The proper arrangement of flower beds in your garden and attentive care to them can insure you a continuing bloom of lovely flowers year after year. For with planning, it is possible to maintain flowers in your garden during the entire length of the growing season.

Borders and beds are planted with flowering annuals and perennials which bloom at different periods during the year. By choosing carefully initially, and by caring for the flowers thereafter, the blooms will overlap each other, so that there will never be a period when an old bloom disappears but that a new one will start to show its color.

Preparing the soil for flower beds or borders requires greater care than planting a lawn. For one thing, digging must be deeper. It is not too much to dig the bed 2 feet deep, although 1 1/2 feet is suitable. It is, of course, possible to grow flowers in a shallower bed than this, but the deeper you dig, the better your production will be.

All heavy lumps should be broken up. It is a good idea to spread some sand, cinders or ashes in the bottom soil to break it up.  Also, you might work manure, well-rotted compost, grass clippings or peat moss into the bottom. Do not firm the bottom soil down, but let it settle naturally.

Good loam should be used for the topsoil — e.g., well-rotted manure, humus, peat moss, well-sifted leaf mold or heavy sand. Wood ashes are fine for spring, and lime may be used for loosening the soil. You might think about the character of your soil and consider the particular fertilizer which contains the elements your soil needs most. Should you use manure, be careful not to let it touch the roots of plants.

Front Yard Landscaping Ideas

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For planting roses a good garden loam with organic matter is important.   It must contain peat moss, leaf mold, compost, rotted or commercial manure, and the bed should be prepared as far ahead of planting as is feasible in order to allow for settling of the soil.

Fall is the best time for setting out roses, but you can plant in spring. When they arrive from the nursery, plant at once. If they have dried en route, soak the roots and put the tops in a bucket of water before planting.

Trim back any roots that are weak, long or broken at this time. Dig a hole that is wide enough to allow the roots to spread without crowding. The rose is properly placed when the bud (the point where the top joins the roots) is just under the ground surface. Space hybrid teas about 18 inches apart in any direction. Prune the branches 6 to 10 inches from the soil.

To grow good roses it is necessary to cultivate, to prune and to spray. If you have a well-cultivated bed you need not worry about watering. But if you start to water in hot weather, you must keep it up, soaking the roots thoroughly about once a week.

Spraying every 10 days guards against the diseases and insects that attack roses.

Winterize your roses by mounding sod around them after the first frost, or mulch with straw and evergreens. In cold parts of the country, remove the supports from the climbing roses and place the canes on the ground, peg them, and cover with soil mounds

In spring, cut back your roses to within 6 inches of the ground. Ruthlessly lop off all but three or four canes on hybrid teas.  This pruning will give you strong plants. When your plants grow out from spring pruning, you will have to disbud, cutting off all the buds except the top ones on the cane. This is the way to grow large blossoms.

Front Yard Landscaping

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For planting roses a good garden loam with organic matter is important.  It must contain peat moss, leaf mold, compost, rotted or commercial manure, and the bed should be prepared as far ahead of planting as is feasible in order to allow for settling of the soil.

Fall is the best time for setting out roses, but you can plant in spring. When they arrive from the nursery, plant at once. If they have dried en route, soak the roots and put the tops in a bucket of water before planting. Trim back any roots that are weak, long or broken at this time.

Dig a hole that is wide enough to allow the roots to spread without crowding. The rose is properly placed when the bud (the point where the top joins the roots) is just under the ground surface. Space hybrid teas about 18 inches apart in any direction. Prune the branches 6 to 10 inches from the soil.

To grow good roses it is necessary to cultivate, to prune and to spray. If you have a well cultivated bed you need not worry about watering. But if you start to water in hot weather, you must keep it up, soaking the roots thoroughly about once a week.  Spraying every 10 days guards against the diseases and insects that attack roses.

Winterize your roses by mounding sod around them after the first frost, or mulch with straw and evergreens. In cold parts of the country, remove the supports from the climbing roses and place the canes on the ground, peg them, and cover with soil mounds.

In spring, cut back your roses to within 6 inches of the ground. Ruthlessly lop off all but three or four canes on hybrid teas.  This pruning will give you strong plants. When your plants grow out from spring pruning, you will have to disbud, cutting off all the buds except the top ones on the cane. This is the way to grow large blossoms.

Front Yard Landscaping

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If you enjoy roses, they can be used not only decoratively but also functionally around your grounds.  They can be used as creepers, shrubs, vines, climbers, hedges or just as beds of pure color. Rose originators are enthusiastic and tireless, and every year new varieties appear. Many popular variaties include the bright floribunda rose, Jiminy Cricket; the soft, pure-pink hybrid tea rose, Queen Elizabeth; the bright” yellow peace rose.

There are over 5,000 varieties of roses in the U.S. alone, and once you start growing your own you are apt to change your preferences from season to season.

In selecting roses, it is important to get healthy plants. Stems should be green and un-shriveled, roots moist and partly fibrous. The most expensive rose is not always the best rose; it may be only a newcomer, much discussed and, therefore, a favorite.

In general, there are two types of roses: bush roses (similar to shrubs) and climbers (producing canes that require some sort of support). In the bush classification, the predominant type is the hybrid tea; it accounts for over 60% of all roses grown in America. The other major bush types are the polyanthas (roses in large clusters), the fioribundas (large-flowered polyanthas), and the hybrid perpetuals (vigorous growers with a great crop in June and continuous blooming throughout the summer).

The climbers include ramblers, whose long pliant canes have large clusters of small roses that can be used for covering walls, fences and banks. The climbers also are pillar roses, adapted to growing near buildings and on posts and the climbing hybrid tree.

Front Yard Landscaping

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If you are planting annuals, ordinary digging in well-drained soil should suffice. But if you are planting perennials, you will want to plant them as well as any shrub; remember that if they are planted close to the foundation, the soil may be poor initially and may need preparation. The hole should be at least 2 feet square.

Break up the bottom soil and mix in bone meal, peat moss, etc. If you are planting near the house, be careful to place the vine far enough from the overhanging eaves so that water will not drip on the leaves. In winter weather, wet leaves can freeze in the evening and crack. Also, if the vines are placed against a sunny wall they will get reflective heat, and so they should receive extra watering in hot weather.

Front Yard Landscaping

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Vines can be the quick salvation of the new home owner.  Fast-paced annuals will twine up a hastily erected pergola almost before summer starts, providing a cool, fragrant and beautiful awning. This can be useful in the front yard or the back.  Annuals and perennials (or hardy vines, as perennials are called) are an inexpensive way of softening the lines of new buildings, linking them to the landscape.

Decorative and functional, vines are often the answer for older homes as well, the ground-covering varieties serving as cover for foundations and banks, others spreading a carpet of flowering greenery over walls, making fences seem friendlier and stone buildings less harsh.

The methods by which vines climb will necessarily influence and determine your selection. Some vines, such as grape vine, have tendrils which reach out and grasp small objects to hold on to; these vines need a lattice or fence. Others, such as Boston ivy, have adhesive discs that fasten on to a brick or stone wall, and still others, such as the climbing hydrangea, hold to a masonry wall with small, aerial rootlets.

Finally, there are those that climb by twining around other branches or poles, climbing from left to right, or right to left (like honeysuckle). This type can be parasitic in the worst sense, climbing over small bushes and trees and completely strangling them.

No vine should be unsupported, however, and attractive vines are those which are carefully trained and held up. Supports such as arbors, trellises and pergolas need not be elaborately constructed, since their function is to display the vine, not themselves. Wood or other material that does not require painting is ideal, for the natural woods are really more suitable as a background for vines than are the painted ones.

If you have a wooden house and want vines on the walls, it is a good idea to construct a detachable trellis, hinged at the bottom so that it can swing outward when painting is going on. There will be sufficient flexibility in the tendrils to allow this.

Front Yard Landscaping

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A well kept hedge can do much for your landscaping. Used in the front of the house and on the sides of your yard, hedges are a barrier against traffic, pollution, noise and all things unsightly; at the same time hedges enhance the overall proportions and general appearance of your house and lawn. Within the boundaries of your property, hedges define paths and walks, demarcate various areas, as well as help to screen service areas and vegetable gardens.

The plant materials generally used for hedges are mentioned in other posts. They include the tall background hedges of holly, thorn or wattle; the informal flowering hedges of rose, bridal wreath spirea or barberry; Such evergreens as mugho pine, globe arbor vitae, box or eunonymus (most of which are used as low edgings) and the colorful fruit and-nut hedges of thorn apple, hazlenut, cherry, beach plum, cranberry and quince.

And, of course, there are the formal clipped hedges. Of these, the Amur privet is by far the most widely used. In fact, the privet is used so universally that it is original to choose any of the above for hedging.

Front Yard Landscaping

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IN general, trees and shrubs are planted and cared for in the same way, the difference between them is chiefly one of height. One definition of the difference, however, is that while a tree has only one trunk, a shrub has several stems or trunks.

Not so long ago the number of reliable shrubs was quite limited, but today the many new hybrids have lengthened the list and the gardener’s choice is almost endless. No matter the region, it is now possible to plant shrubs that will satisfy color needs, bloom at various seasons, cover bare spots where grass won’t grow, or grow in such profusion and depth that screening purposes are served.

Shrubs are valuable to the gardener because they bridge the gap between trees and flowers. As do trees, they serve as boundary markers, soften the lines of buildings, act as a decorative background for flower beds and hide unsightly views. Like flowers, they add character and shape to the garden, blooming forth with colorful blossoms and attracting birds with their berries. One big item in their favor is that they mature rapidly, yet remain as hardy and long-lived as trees.

Front Yard Landscaping

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